Inside the Star

A new twist on China’s dating game

Zhang Peijuan was among 38,000 singles and concerned parents at Shanghai’s largest matchmaking event last month, as the city seeks to revive a birth rate that has collapsed to almost half the level in Japan. China’s richest city, leading financial centre and largest port will also see marriage registrations fall 17 per cent this year, according to official estimates.

Zhang Peijuan, 58, scans the thousands of young men and women gathered in Shanghai’s Expo Park, looking for an eligible bachelor.

“He should have a college degree, be about 1.75 metres tall (5-foot-7), and property is a must,” says the retired researcher, who is shopping for a husband for her daughter and carries three photos of the 28-year-old in her handbag. “When I see someone I think my daughter may like, I approach him for his contact.”

Zhang was among 38,000 singles and concerned parents at Shanghai’s largest matchmaking event last month, as the city seeks to revive a birth rate that has collapsed to almost half the level in Japan. China’s richest city, leading financial centre and largest port will also see marriage registrations fall 17 per cent this year, according to official estimates.

Higher education levels, a focus on careers and greater expectations are causing city-dwellers to marry later and have fewer children.

“Shanghai is at the frontier of these broad social changes and this is what is happening across urban China,” said Wang Feng, Beijing-based director for the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy. “We will see it spread.”

Better education has given more women the desire to choose their own partner, said Juemin Zhou, director of the Shanghai Matchmaking Trade Association, the main organizer of the event.

“In the past, women were matchmade by their parents,” said Zhou. “Then, it didn’t matter how old you were, or if your partner was blind in one eye, you still had to get married. Now, if you don’t find someone suitable, you just don’t settle.”

Higher learning breeds higher expectations, and the group of well-educated, older, unmarried women has swelled in the last two years, Zhou said.

According to the Brookings-Tsinghua Center, the number of single Shanghai women in their late 20s has tripled in the last 15 years, to almost one in three.

“The first thing they look for is if you have a decent job, what is your salary like, if you have an apartment,” said Hansen Huang, 34, who came to the fair with a friend “to give myself a chance.”

Huang, who works in Shanghai’s information technology industry, said “women are looking for a partner who can provide so they can live relatively comfortably.”

While some women look to marry later, social expectations for a younger bride remain. A survey in Shanghai this year by Jiayuan.com, China’s largest online dating agency, categorized women over 29 as “leftovers.”

“Women can be very picky when they’re young,” said Huang. “But if you don’t sell when it commands the highest value, you may miss the golden opportunity.”